Obama Administration

Until his confirmation hearings, I had believed that after intensive and harsh questioning, former Sen. Chuck Hagel would be confirmed as President Barack Obama's choice to be the next Secretary of Defense. No one could have anticipated the catastrophic performance of the nominee before the Senate Armed Services Committee while on the international stage, something which has been acknowledged even by stunned officials of the administration. Hagel acknowledged that there are key...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accepted an invitation to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in September, as Washington seeks to court the Asian giant's new government and revive strained relations between the world's two largest democracies. The Obama administration has been working to boost ties since Modi's thumping election victory, seeing India as an important counterweight to an increasingly assertive China and a prospective export market. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration warned lawmakers on Thursday that U.S. border control agencies would run out of money and migrant children would run out of beds if Congress did not approve $3.7 billion in funds to address an influx of people from Central America. Days after the White House put forward its request for emergency funding to address the humanitarian crisis at the southwest U.S. border, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh...

The Obama administration's $3.7 billion request for emergency funds to bolster U.S. border security and deal with a massive influx of migrant children from Central America is too high and will be reduced, an influential Republican lawmaker said on Friday. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers said the amount was "too much money" and a large portion of the funds needed to deal with the problems could be handled through the...

BRASILIA (Reuters) - President Dilma Rousseff said the Obama administration was not directly responsible for U.S. spying on Brazil and has taken steps toward smoothing over the diplomatic tensions set off by espionage disclosures last year. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour broadcast on Thursday, Rousseff said she understood that the Obama administration needed time resolve what was happening and could not immediately provide explanations demanded by Brazil. ...

Fleeing gang violence in Central America - and Chicago Incensed by President Barack Obama's plan to deport thousands of immigrant children who have arrived in the U.S. illegally in recent months, activists have taken to the streets to chide the president. Many protests have included children. At one, a young boy can be seen carrying a sign that reads, “No deportation of children fleeing violence and poverty.” I, too, care about children facing violence and poverty,...

WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Obama administration is grappling with a surge in child migrants at the southwestern U.S. border, some accompanied by parents and some traveling alone. Seeking to escape poverty and drug and gang violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, tens of thousands of children have attempted to enter the United States illegally in recent months. The crisis is putting strains on the U.S. budget because of the cost of providing...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration called on Congress to do more to help the economy create jobs, with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis saying May's rise in the unemployment rate was unacceptable. "Congress has to take some action because while we see the unemployment rate where it is, it's not acceptable," Solis told the CNBC network on Friday. Earlier, the Labor Department said the unemployment rate rose a tenth of a point in May to 8.2...

“What this law basically says is that the government should be held to a very high level of proof before it interferes with someone's free exercise of religion.” - President Bill Clinton, at his signing ceremony for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Nov. 17, 1993 Since March 2010, as the Obama administration turned the Affordable Care Act into federal regulations, few provisions grew as controversial as the mandate...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Monday renewed an interagency agreement that backs the development of biofuels for the aviation industry and reiterated its support for embattled federal renewable fuel targets. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood signed a pact extending a program that has worked with the private sector and rural communities to create an alternative to fossil fuels for aviation. "We want to...

The Obama administration is flying armed aircraft over Iraq, defense officials said on Friday, adding that the flights were aimed at gathering intelligence and ensuring the safety of U.S. personnel on the ground rather than conducting strikes. "What I would tell you is that we continue to fly both manned and unmanned aircraft over Iraq at the ... Iraqi government's request, predominantly for reconnaissance purposes. Some of those aircraft are armed," Rear Admiral John Kirby, a Pentagon...

- Thirty-five years ago in United States v. Choate, the courts ruled that the U.S. Postal Service may record "mail cover," i.e., what's written on the outside of an envelope - the addresses of sender and receiver. The National Security Agency's recording of U.S. phone data does basically that with the telephone. It records who is calling whom - the outside of the envelope, as it were. The content of the conversation, however, is like the letter inside the envelope. It may not be opened...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator Lisa Murkowski urged the Obama administration on Tuesday to fully lift the 40-year-old ban on crude exports after a news report said U.S. officials have allowed two companies to export shipments of a light oil called condensates. The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Commerce Department gave approval via a private ruling to Pioneer Natural Resources Co and Enterprise Product Partners LP to export the oil. ...

SANTO DOMINGO (Reuters) - The percentage of cocaine flowing to the United States through the Caribbean has more than tripled in the past three years, an Obama administration official said on Tuesday, adding weight to claims that criminal organizations are shifting back to a route they abandoned years ago. About 16 percent of drugs entered the United States through the islands, up from 5 percent in 2011, said William Brownfield, assistant Secretary of...